Chapter 1:

Notes

•Introduction Europeans called the Americas “the New World,” but for Native Americans, it was their ancestral homeland. Human habitation exceeds ten thousand years, featuring diverse cultures, languages, and societies. Native Americans built settled communities, engaged in seasonal migrations, formed alliances, and developed self-sufficient economies with extensive trade. They created unique art, spiritual practices, and kinship systems. The European arrival sparked the Columbian Exchange—a global transfer of people, animals, plants, and microbes—leading to violence, biological upheaval, and major shifts in world history, marking a pivotal human era. •The First Americans Native Americans’ origins are rooted in oral traditions and archaeology. Creation myths include the Salinan eagle and clay figure, Lenape’s Turtle Island, and Choctaw’s Mother Mound, emphasizing spiritual and migratory origins. Migration patterns, traced through artifacts, bones, and genetics, show that during the last Ice Age (~20,000 years ago), the Americas connected to Asia via the Bering Land Bridge. Early hunter-gatherers traveled along coasts and ice sheets, settling as far south as Chile and Florida by...